


Apitic Gray and Stoner Blue

by Sholio



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Bonding, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 08:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23468662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Peter's grandpa says to call him Mike. Peter's grandpa has been taking all of this remarkably well. Three days ago, Peter showed up on his porch, late at night -- crickets chirping, hot and humid, the whole damn place just like Peter's vague childhood memories ... just like he was never gone, just like thirty-five years and a wholelifedidn't happen somewhere else.
Relationships: Nebula & Peter Quill, Peter Quill & Peter Quill's Grandfather
Comments: 48
Kudos: 193
Collections: Quill Family Reunions, Robot Rainbow 2020





	Apitic Gray and Stoner Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



It's a gorgeous summer day in Missouri with air so thick you could almost drink it, and Peter's grandfather wants Peter to help him paint the barn.

"Are you serious," Peter groans, but he allows himself to be peeled, rather stickily, off the couch, and off they go to the shed where Peter's grandpa says the paint is stored.

Peter's grandpa says to call him Mike. Peter's grandpa has been taking all of this remarkably well. Three days ago, Peter showed up on his porch, late at night -- crickets chirping, hot and humid, the whole damn place just like Peter's vague childhood memories ... just like he was never gone, just like thirty-five years and a whole _life_ didn't happen somewhere else. 

There are times when Peter could almost imagine he's lost his mind, that none of it's real, that he didn't find a family, he didn't love people and lose people out there between the stars. Maybe something in him broke when his mom died; maybe he's been here on Earth the whole time, maybe ...

But the news (playing on the brand-new flatscreen TV in the otherwise stuck-firmly-in-the-70s farmhouse) has been full of aliens 24/7, as well as constant updates on the aftermath of the battle in New York. It all reminds Peter how tiny planets really are -- a couple thousand miles is nothing when you've been halfway around the galaxy. 

He's been watching Netflix as much as possible.

He hasn't actually told his grandfather a thing about where he's been or why he's here. He just rang that doorbell, and Mike Quill opened it, and they stared at each other for a long minute while Peter realized slowly that he had never seen himself in someone else's face before. Mike doesn't look like him, not exactly. But Peter _knows_ that chin, that slight curl in the wispy white hair around his grandfather's ears ... and those eyes, those are his mother's eyes.

"I'm Meredith's son," he said that night, and his voice cracked on the realization that coming here, all of it, had all been a terrible mistake.

"I know," was all his grandfather said, and he opened the door and Peter came in.

*

Since then, Peter has fielded about a dozen missed calls from his teammates. He hasn't been answering. For him, for most of them, everything that happened on Titan was a goddamn couple of days ago. So what if Rocket's had five years to adjust to it all, and Drax pretty much lives in the moment all the time anyway and Mantis spends most of her time off in her own daydream world and Groot is ... well, no one really knows _what's_ going on Groot's head most of the time. 

Anyway, the only one of them who hasn't tried to contact him is Rocket, and Rocket is also the one who could find him in a hot five seconds if Rocket really wanted to. So Peter has decided it's completely justifiable to spend a few days laying on his grandfather's couch and sampling from the well-stocked whiskey cabinet and getting caught up on thirty years of Earth pop culture.

He should have known it was too good to last.

*

The shed is stiflingly hot, lined with rickety wooden shelves stacked with gardening tools and lawnmower parts and weed killer and, of course, the promised cans of paint -- every can half used, with long-fossilized drips trailing down the sides. The most recent paint in this shed was probably bought no later than 1972.

"If I get bitten by a spider and die in this shed," Peter says, ducking a suspicious-looking cobweb, "please give my personal effects to the National Council to Prevent Spider Bites."

"They're more afraid of you than you are of them."

Peter doubts this very much, but he's fought bounty hunters and mercenaries and Kree fanatics, so he is pretty sure he can handle a few spiders, damn it.

They haul paint cans out into the yard and deposit them in a patch of shade along the fence. It is soon apparent that not only is every single can of paint half-dried and ancient, but most of them have either lost most of their pigment over a hundred and seventy years of being locked up in a zillion degrees of Missouri summer heat, or else no one in Missouri knows how to mix paint, because they all seem to be vaguely unpleasant shades of gray lightly flavored with hints of color.

"What the heck is this one?" Peter says, trying to read the peeling, yellowed labels. "Eggshell? You know, I'm no farmer, so don't quote me on this, but if any hen is making eggs this color, I think she's probably gonna die."

"It's a paint color, son. It's not supposed to mean anything."

That's right. Pretentious paint color names. Another ye olde Earth thing. All of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning from a summer thunderstorm, Peter remembers his mom looking at paint swatches in the hardware store for the new paint for his bedroom ... before she got sick, and his bedroom stayed that moldering greenish color with the mildew stains for the rest of the time he lived there.

But he remembers her standing there in a loose blue dress in a small-town True Value hardware store, flipping through card with names like _Sage Green_ and _Dusty Rose._ "Do you like this one, baby?" she'd say, holding one up. And Peter would mumble and squirm and go back to playing with toy cars on the cracked tile floor.

He wishes he could go back and have an opinion on paint cards for her. It's the least of the things he'd change, of course, if he had the ability to do that. But suddenly it makes his throat seize up that he can't even do that for her.

"Yeah, well, so," Peter says roughly, poking at the long-dried dribbles of yellowish-gray paint, "I'm calling this one Clay Cow instead."

Henceforth he decides to rename every paint can as they carry them out of the shed, just because he can.

"I think I'll call this one Sudden Pine," Peter says, holding up a paint chip that exists somewhere in an uneasy state between gray and green.

"What's sudden about it?" his grandfather asks.

"It's a paint color. It's not supposed to mean anything, remember?"

This is followed by colors that Peter decides to call Stoner Blue, Bull Cream (an off-white, obviously), Dorky Brown, Ghastly Pink, Farty Red, and (Peter's personal favorite, in title at least) Turdly, a worrying shade of not-quite-brown.

"How about you pry off some of these lids and see if any of these cans has enough paint in 'em to use," his grandfather says, tossing him a large screwdriver. 

Peter is struggling with a badly stuck-on lid when a shadow falls across him and another can of paint plunks down in front of him. And then a voice from another place, a voice from another life, says, "This one will be called Stargoon."

Peter nearly jumps out of his skin. The screwdriver skids across the top of the can and nearly takes a gouge out of the back of his hand.

 _"Jesus Christ Nebula_ , where the fuck did you come from?"

He stares up at her. It's definitely her; it's not like there could possibly be _two_ blue cyborgs running around on Earth ... well, unless it's a Nebula from a different timeline, which is always possible at this point ( _what is his life even_ ) but the point is, Earth is not exactly well stocked with blue aliens. 

Even if she's wearing a wide straw hat and -- Peter has to look twice, but no, he's not imagining it due to heatstroke -- a pair of his grandpa's overalls.

"Oh, hi there, sweetheart," his grandfather says from over at the shed. He's tinkering with the compressor motor on a big tank thing with a nozzle. "You feed and water the cows like I asked?"

"The cows are nourished and provided with moisture," Nebula says in an even flatter than usual voice, as if she can't believe what she's saying either. "I have obtained seven embryonic poultry as well." She holds up a dented tin bucket that probably has chicken eggs in it. Probably. Hopefully.

Peter gives his grandfather a boggled look, but if Mike Quill finds anything strange about a blue alien cyborg in overalls standing in his backyard with an egg-collecting bucket, talking about livestock, it's not betrayed by a single eyebrow twitch.

"Is this what having a stroke feels like?" Peter says to no one in particular.

"You go put the bucket in the house and we'll have lunch," his grandfather says. "You eat, right?"

"I do eat." Nebula looks at the thing he's working on (Peter is pretty sure it's some kind of paint sprayer) and her flat expression gets, if possible, even flatter.

"You got some ideas here?" Mike asks, as if there's an actual conversation going on, rather than just Nebula staring at things. "Be my guest."

He steps back and Nebula moves in, crouches down, and extracts a small tool from the pocket of the overalls Peter still can't believe she's wearing. Absently she starts to drop the egg pail. Mike Quill grabs it smoothly just as it leaves her hand.

"Think you can fix that?"

Nebula grunts. Mike nods like she actually said something.

"Well then, we'll just be up at the house. Come on up for lunch when you're hungry."

He jerks his chin at Peter, who staggers to his feet and drops the screwdriver on top of the paint can. The loud _ping!_ makes Peter jump again. His nerves are, apparently, shot.

He follows his grandfather to the house. As soon as Nebula is (presumably) out of earshot, Peter blurts out in a loud whisper, "Where did she _come_ from?!"

"Showed up about a day after you did." Mike holds the screen door for him. The interior of the house is a cool relief after the heat of the sun.

"She did _what_ now."

"She's been sleeping in the barn. Said she'd be fine there." 

"So were you going to _mention_ to me at some point that you have an alien living in your barn, or ..."

"Figured she'd come over and say hi when she was ready."

"I feel as if this is definitely answering the letter of the question but not the spirit of it." Also, his grandfather's calm acceptance of Peter showing up on his doorstep and never asking any questions about where he's been for the last thirty years is starting to seem less like family support and more like a conspiracy.

"Break some of those eggs into a bowl, would you? Omelets for lunch sound like a good idea to me."

Peter sighs and does. His grandfather is a lot like Yondu, when it comes right down to it -- minus the hitting, but similarly allergic to directly answering questions or ever having a conversation about anything.

They've put out three omelets on three plates with thick slabs of homemade bread when Nebula comes in. She stops in the doorway, looking very out of place and very aware of it.

"Hands," Peter's grandfather says, pointing to the sink. Nebula cautiously raises her hands to about waist level. "Wash 'em. Use soap. You get the sprayer running?" he asks as Nebula crosses the kitchen. She gives Peter a sideways look and a lot of space.

"Yes," Nebula says after a moment's study of the bottle of dish soap. She pours a pool of it into her palm and sudses up her grease-blackened hands under the tap.

"Hat should come off in the house," Mike says, and Nebula takes the straw hat off (to Peter's secret relief), turns it around in her wet hands, and then puts it on the counter.

Lunch is not as awkward as it could possibly be only because Peter's entire life among aliens has introduced him to awkwardness in all its many forms and he's gotten used to it. Still, it's pretty awkward. Nebula shovels in eggs, which makes Peter realize that he genuinely wasn't sure, until now, that she can eat things. Apparently she can, and apparently Earth food doesn't hurt her, which brings up a whole surge of could-have-beens and nevers that he ruthlessly suppresses. Things he never introduced certain people to, when they were around to introduce things to. Maybe he should have pushed to go back to Earth during the past few years -- well, not the past few years _exactly_ , but the past few years that didn't vanish for him and half the rest of humanity, those few short years of being happier than he'd ever been before or would ever be again --

"Butter," Nebula says tersely, breaking into his thoughts, and it takes him a minute to realize that she's not insulting him, but asking him to pass the item in question. 

He does.

*

After lunch, Peter washes the dishes and Nebula, after a little prodding from Mike, dries them and carefully sorts them by size in a pile on the counter, which Peter supposes is a reasonable enough facsimile for putting them away. She then joins them on the rest of the collecting and organizing of the paint.

She also, eventually and with some coaxing, joins in on the naming game, although she doesn't quite seem to understand the rules.

"What in the hell," Peter says, "is Corcaunitiol Orange?"

"That," Nebula says, pointing to the crusty paint he's stirring with a stick.

"It's not even orange."

Nebula also contributes Apitic Gray, Lime Pink (at least both words are real, Peter thinks), and Otter Rose, which ... he's not even going to ask, though he does wonder where she learned about otters.

"Why are you _here?"_ he asks in an undertone as they carry cans of paint to the barn.

"I have to be somewhere."

"That is so not even _close_ to being an answer to that question. Does Rocket know you're here?"

She doesn't answer, ominously.

"Oh my God. Are you and Rocket _friends?_ When did this happen?" Like he doesn't know. This is what happens when you're technically dead for five years.

Nebula pops the top off a paint can (effortlessly, Peter notes with envy) and shoves it at him. "Paint something," she says.

*

They end up painting the barn Farty Red with accents of Apitic Gray. This is mostly due to having enough of those colors to have at least some kind of outside chance of managing to cover it without having to resort to Stoner Blue or Bull Cream, but they do go reasonably well together, and look sort of barn-ish.

It goes astonishingly fast with the paint sprayer, especially the paint sprayer as fixed by Nebula; it now glows blue and seems to be able to spray paint improbably around corners.

"You've definitely been hanging out with Rocket."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nebula says. She pushes a button on the side of the paint sprayer and a piece of slightly burnt toast pops out. She gives it to him. "Feed your stupid Terran face and stop bothering me."

"... did you put that in earlier, or does this thing _bake bread_ now?"

He doesn't get an answer to that.

*

Dinner is grilled on the back porch, burgers and steaks from fresh grass-fed beef (which Peter thinks is probably inappropriate to grill _right there,_ where the cows can watch, but no one else seems to agree).

Mike does most of the grilling, wearing an apron that says KISS THE COOK. Nebula somehow acquired a flowered apron from elsewhere in the house and she is wearing it over the paint-stained overalls. She helps Mike at the grill. 

Peter offers to help too, but there are clearly too many cooks and Nebula has very sharp elbows plus built-in weapons, so he sprawls on the porch swing with a beer and watches them. It's very quiet out here, and very still. The sky is filled with a million stars.

"This is a very inefficient way to burn meat," Nebula is saying, at the grill.

"That's why it's fun, kiddo."

Peter looks up at the sky, at the stars that have been home for most of his life. There's a quick glimmer -- a meteorite. Shooting stars, they call them here. Those are good luck on some planets, he recalls, though he can't remember if Earth is one of them.

Shooting Star White.

He's not okay. But this is the first time since he came here, the first time since everything, that he's starting to feel like he might be.

**Author's Note:**

> These are all (well, mostly) actual neural-net-generated paint colors: [see here.](https://aiweirdness.com/tagged/paint-colors)


End file.
